Every week, CIO Journal offers a glimpse into the mind of the CEO, whose view of technology is shaped by stories in management journals, general interest magazines and, of course, in-flight publications.

Why CEOs are getting fired more. Chief executives are getting pushed out at a rate that would make their Organization Man-era forebears spit out their martinis. The percentage of forced turnover has tripled between 1970 and 2006, with the average tenure in the corner office down to six years or so. Technology has played a role. “In the social-media era, damaging stories travel fast, and boards take public relations very seriously,” the New Yorker’s James Surowlecki writes. New laws, such as 2002’s Sarbanes-Oxley Act, also have cut into CEO power, granting greater disclosure to investors, and increasing the independence of corporate boards. The irony may be that the 21st Century “cult of the CEO,” the belief that success lies in finding (and paying and paying even more) for that right leader, may have had the greatest influence in the trend. “In the past thirty years, C.E.O.s have remade American companies as lean, mean machines that put shareholder value above all else,” Mr. Surowlecki concludes. “It’s only fitting that they’re victims of the same logic.”

Some good news on climate change and the economy. With the Paris Agreement on greenhouse gas emissions set to go into action on Friday, PricewaterhouseCoopers reports that in 2015 global GDP grew by 3.1%, while global emissions were flat. It’s the second year in a row that GDP and emissions have been decoupled, Quartz’s Akshat Rathi writes, noting that in previous years, growth went “hand-in-hand with increased use of fossil fuel.” PwC says credit for 2015’s 2.8% decrease in global carbon intensity—measured in emissions per unit of GDP—comes from moves by China and other emerging economies to cut their dependence on coal. China marked a 6.6% decrease in carbon intensity. Quartz argues that “heavy global investments in renewable energy,” also deserves credit. But there’s more work required to stop global temperatures from rising above 2 degrees compared to pre-industrial levels--a so called point of no return. Global carbon intensity will need to fall by 6.5% per year from now to 2100, based on GDP growth of 3% each year.

Industrial spying can pay off. Seeking to understand the impact of industrial spying, two researchers cross-referenced Cold War-era economic data for East and West Germany with the archives of the East German Ministry for State Security, or Stasi. What they found was that state-supported efforts can narrow technology gaps and deliver healthy returns. "Each standard deviation in increased spying activity narrowed the so-called total factor productivity gap by 8.5 percentage points," Erik Meyersson, an assistant professor at Stockholm School of Economics, tells Harvard Business Review. But East Germany's effort, which involved thousands of informants around West Germany, was so successful it "crowded out standard forms of R&D." New patent applications in East Germany fell over time, leading to an even greater dependence on spying. "It’s like R&D on cocaine," Mr. Meyersson said. "You get there very quickly, but you don’t really develop the tools for engaging in innovation for the long run."